


Buddy Aurinko's Guide to Sharing Lipstick

by anamnesisUnending



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Gen, Lipstick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 22:48:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamnesisUnending/pseuds/anamnesisUnending
Summary: Buddy hadn’t worn lipstick when Juno first met her, but the longer he resides on the ship, the more the rich, blood red shade becomes a constant fixture on her lips. And on other places as well.





	Buddy Aurinko's Guide to Sharing Lipstick

**Author's Note:**

> as a rule I generally don't post things that are shorter than 1,000 words, but I liked this and I wanted to post something before the season 3 premier, so here we are. enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: now with some fabulous art by [ Illuminahsti ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illuminahsti/pseuds/Illuminahsti) to be found [ here ](https://alecjmarsh.tumblr.com/post/190087865963/hey-so-i-dont-write-buddyvespa-but-every-single)

Buddy hadn’t worn lipstick when Juno first met her, but the longer he resides on the ship, the more the rich, blood red shade becomes a constant fixture on her lips. And on other places as well.

There’s the little cocktail napkin Buddy passes to Vespa when the team is staking out a bar, a perfect red kiss pressed into it. Vespa blushes and looks up to meet Buddy’s eyes, shyly, flirtatiously, as though they haven’t been hopelessly in love for at least two decades, all their time apart notwithstanding.

Then it’s on Vespa’s forehead, a bright crimson streak just above one of her eyebrows. He has to do a double take when he sees it, because on first glance it looks like bloody scrape, and he thinks she’s been hurt until he sees her catching her own reflection in the window, her face softening with a smile as her fingers come up to brush against the little mark, coming away just barely dusted with the same hue.

Juno can’t help but feel like a voyeur, looking in on these little moments of intimacy, but… well, he’s a detective; he can’t help but notice.

Sometimes it’s a ghost of a kiss across her scarred knuckles. Sometimes it’s a carefully placed mark on the inside of her wrist, before Buddy is called away for the day on business. (On those long days without her, Vespa worries at the mark with her thumb until it’s only a hazy blotch of red, hardly recognizable as lipstick anymore). It’s a mark of joy pressed to her cheek, or on the bridge of her crooked nose, her shoulder, her jaw. Once, there’s a vivid lipstick stain on her neck, just below her pulse point, and Juno can’t make eye contact with Vespa _or_ Buddy without blushing that morning at breakfast.

(Later that day, Buddy takes him by the hand in the hallway with a sly grin. “You must understand, darling,” she teases, “I only have eyes for Vespa, but I’d hate to make a lady so charming as yourself jealous.” And she kisses the back of his hand. He makes a show of rolling his eyes and scrubbing the mark away, and if he smiles later at the remnants of the kiss, she doesn’t have to know. Nor will she see all the plum-colored kisses Nureyev leaves across his body that night, when he sees the red stain.)

When Rita performs some miraculous feat of hacking, the sort she’s done thanklessly for Juno for years, Buddy congratulates her with a kiss on the cheek, and Juno thinks Rita’s brain must nearly short-circuit. When Nureyev surprises Buddy and Vespa on their anniversary with a matching set of elegant, engraved daggers, she thanks him by knocking his glasses askew with a kiss on his temple. When the Ruby brings them back to the ship after a narrow escape, there’s a mark of celebratory red on Jet’s cheek, and a messy smear of it across Vespa’s lips as well. (Buddy’s lipstick, of course, is once again immaculate; Juno had caught a glimpse of them in the rearview mirror, Vespa draped across Buddy’s lap with makeup wipes and lipstick in hand, fixing Buddy’s perfect scarlet smile while grinning at the mess of her own mouth.)

When they return from a supply run, it’s with a pilfered tube of deep emerald green, which Vespa has carefully applied to her own lips.

(And that night, when neither Buddy nor Juno can sleep, they share a drink at the kitchen table, and she tilts her head and her hair falls just so, and he can see this: just beneath her cybernetic eye, brilliant against the greyed skin, is a little mark of glimmering green lipstick.)


End file.
